Overview

The fossils of the Burgess Shale, like the Burgess Shale itself, formed around 505 million years ago in the Mid Cambrian period. They were discovered in Canada in in 1886, and Charles Doolittle Walcott collected over 60,000 specimens in a series of field trips up from 1909 to 1924. After a period of neglect from the 1930s to the early 1960s, new excavations and re-examinations of Walcott's collection continue to discover new species, and statistical analysis suggests discoveries will continue for the foreseeable future. Stephen Jay Gould's book Wonderful Life describes the history of discovery up to the early 1980s, although his analysis of the implications for evolution is largely superseded. The fossil beds are in a series of shale layers, averaging 30 millimetres (1.2 in) and totalling about 160 metres (520 ft) in thickness. These layers were deposited against the face of a high undersea limestone cliff. All these features were later raised up 2,500 metres (8,000 ft) above current sea level during the creation of the Rocky Mountains.

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